Brown Agenda

With the increasingly high profile of global environmental concerns from the 1980s,
the urban agenda for developing countries has seen progressive shifts toward a
focus on urban environmental issues, collectively termed the brown agenda. The
most critical and immediate development issues facing cities of the developing
world those of water supply, sanitation, and waste management were
reconceptualized through an environmental lens rather than being seen solely in
terms of ensuring urban service delivery and meeting the basic needs of the urban
poor. This shift in emphasis was clearly evident in the discourses of the United
Nations and World Bank in the early 1990s, with the latter heralding a new urban
agenda. Given the global scope of the green movement, by this time,
international development agencies, national governments, and NGOs found the
concept of a brown movement a useful vehicle for deflecting blame for
environmental ills from urbanization and cities and for focusing on the local and
immediate environmental concerns of urban dwellers. This environmental turn
constituted both a potential threat to a focus on the needs and rights of poor people
in cities and an opportunity to reprioritize urban development issues by feeding
brown agenda concerns into wider environmental debates.

The issues that constitute the brown agenda are by and large not new; however, the
relabeling of these issues as specifically environmental has a number of
implications. From a development perspective, there are worries that shifting the
focus of attention from the basic needs of poor people to the urban environment
might undermine efforts at poverty reduction. From an environmental angle, the
question is raised as to whether brown agenda issues ought to be thought of as
separate from the concerns of the broader green movement or as localized
expressions of the same agenda; if thought of as separate, there are implications
about potential tradeoffs between brown and green issues. Adrian Atkinson has
argued, for example, that the idea of a brown agenda can distract from the critical
broader green one and result in a prioritizing of the short term over the long, and
the local over the planet itself. Ultimately, while the codification of urban
environmental issues into a clear agenda has been useful in highlighting the
relationship between poverty and the environment at the local level, the brown
agenda is best seen as a means of integrating these issues with wider green and
development problems respectively, rather than as a separate or opposing agenda.

What Is the Brown Agenda?

In brief, the brown agenda refers to issues of safe water provision, sanitation, and
drainage; inadequate solid and hazardous waste management; and air pollution
including uncontrolled emissions from motor vehicles, factories, and low grade
domestic fuels. The brown agenda emerged as a matter of concern and debate, in
part, because of a perceived lack of attention to the specifically urban
environmental problems of the developing world. This lack of a coherent urban
environmental agenda was due to both the rural focus of many development
debates and interventions, and the emphasis in environmental debates on natural
resources and the global commons. In contrast, the gaze of the brown agenda is
firmly trained on problems faced by cities of the global South, including rapid
urbanization and growing urban poverty alongside poor urban management and
inadequate service delivery. These problems in turn are inextricably linked to
environmental degradation at city level.

In many respects, the brown agenda is an attempt to place developing countries at

the forefront of both environmental and development debates and to confront the
disconnect between global environmental green problems and the problems
confronting cities. The justification for an urban focus is clear. The United Nations
estimates that in 2007 the worlds urban population, as a percentage of the total
world population, will surpass the rural population and by 2030, the proportion of
the worlds population living in cities is expected to reach 61%, and 79% of these
urban dwellers will live in less developed countries. Cities loom large as engines of
economic growth and as perpetrators of environmental degradation, while also
themselves being subject to some of the severest impacts of poor environmental
management. Moreover, the environmental problems that cities face have very
immediate and dramatic consequences. In this respect, the brown agenda serves to
highlight environmental problems that are not necessarily the concern of future
generations but are urgent problems whose impacts are being felt by millions of
people already, problems such as the absence of safe and affordable drinking water
or unnecessary mortality and morbidity from preventable diarrhoeal diseases.
Certainly, problems such as inadequate water provision and poor sanitation facilities
are not new in the developing world, but there is a consensus that urban
environmental degradation has rapidly exacerbated these problems in recent
decades.

That the global and regional problems of climate change, atmospheric pollution,
ocean acidification, and land degradation are worsening is now well known and is
often perceived as an inevitable consequence of unregulated economic
development. But why problems such as basic sanitation, water provision, and
waste management should be worsening is less clear. In part, the explanation can
be found in the political and economic approaches championed in the developed
world and increasingly adopted in the developing world, which have had negative
and localized effects on cities in poor countries. Finding themselves in huge
amounts of debt, many governments in developing countries have been
encouraged to make investments that are likely to damage the environment in the
long term. This has been accompanied by a retreat of the state under neoliberal
economic development policies, leading to failure on the part both of states and the
private sector to secure urban environmental services for the poor. In part, however,
the answer also lies in the dramatic increase in urbanization and urban poverty,
which has had huge knock on effects for urban environments in which the urban
poor effectively destroy their own environment through processes of survival. It
tends to be the case that the poor create localized problems in their own
environment, while the rich create problems impacting on a wider public.

In contrast to cities in developing countries, which predominantly degrade their

own immediate environment with negative health impacts for their own people,
cities in the developed world often have an impact on the environment and global
futures in ways that do not always affect their own populations in greater measure.
Hence environmental degradation can take place on many different levels, but it is
hard to expect wider green issues to be addressed adequately in contexts where
brown agenda problems have such a damaging, inescapable impact on daily life.
The following section briefly examines each of the major elements of the brown
agenda in turn.

Main Elements of the Brown Agenda

Water Supply

Access to safe water and sanitation are two of the most urgent problems associated
with the urban environment in the developing world. Globally, 1.1 billion people do
not have access to adequate water supplies and more than double that figure 2.4
billion lack adequate sanitation facilities. These problems are particularly acute for
the urban poor in many cities. For instance, UN HABITAT estimates that the number
of African urban dwellers without access to adequate water provision is between
100 and 150 million or 3540% of the population. Even where water is available, it
may only run for a few hours a day via a pipe shared by hundreds of households. In
Rajkot, India, a city with a population of 600 000, for example, piped water runs for
only 20 min each day. Where water supplies are inadequate or unreliable, people
are forced to purchase water, which can be financially devastating. In Mumbai, for
example, the urban poor are often forced to buy water from informal vendors who
may charge as much as forty times more per liter than the piped connections
enjoyed by the wealthier households. Furthermore, access to water does not mean
it is safe to drink. Wastewater treatment is so inadequate in many cities that the
problem of contaminated water is an enormous environmental and health burden.
Of Indias 3700 cities and large towns, only 17 have full wastewater treatment
facilities. As a result, the vast majority of wastewater is dumped into rivers, lakes,
and coastal waters without treatment. This of course highlights one of the many
linkages between the brown agenda and the health burden of the urban poor in
cities of the global South.

Sanitation

Commanding less attention than water supply, the situation with regard to
sanitation is nevertheless abysmal in most cities of the developing world, and again
Africa suffers most of all. In cities such as Addis Ababa, Dar es Salaam, Kigali,
Brazzaville, and Harare, more than 90% of the population live in homes with no
connection to a sewer. Worse still, the city of Lagos the largest city in Sub-Saharan
Africa with a population of over 13 million has literally lost infrastructure over
recent decades and now less than 1% of households is linked to a closed sewer
system, this proportion largely consisting of hotels and wealthy compounds.
Kinshasa, with a population approaching 10 million has no waterborne sewerage
system at all. In these cities, pit and bucket latrines are often shared between
hundreds or thousands of people, and open defecation is common. The situation in
many parts of Asia is not much better, with sewer connections in Manila at below
10% and a study of slums in India, finding, in one case, just 19 latrines for 102 000
people. In some cities, communal toilet blocks for low income areas have become a
focus of community organized activity, with successful examples from organized
slum and pavement dwellers in Mumbai having inspired similar initiatives
elsewhere. The Orangi Pilot Project in Karachi used community participation and self
help strategies to help low income households in informal settlements acquire
sewerage connections. However, while sanitation is an issue on which local
community mobilization can bring about substantial improvements, it does of
course crucially depend on connections into wider infrastructure for water supply
and sewerage.

Solid and Hazardous Waste Management

Cities generate huge amounts of solid waste or garbage, with the amount of waste
generated tending to increase with income. Nevertheless, it is the poorer cities that
have the greatest problems dealing with waste collection and disposal. In Dar es
Salaam, for example, with 75% of the population living in unplanned areas, only
10% of the 2000 tons of solid waste generated daily is actually collected. In
Sambalpur, India, a survey indicated that 98% of households simply threw their
rubbish out in the open as there were no rubbish bins available in the area. Very
often waste is thrown into rivers and lakes with huge knock on effects for water
pollution. In Sao Paolo, for instance, half the citys favelas are located on the
banks of the reservoirs supplying water to the metropolis, and those living in the
slums throw their waste directly into this reservoir or the brooks running into it.

Inadequate waste disposal can also exacerbate problems of drainage and poor
drainage, waste management, and sanitation interacting together can be
devastating on the urban environment and health piles of rubbish block drains
leading to stagnant pools of water, breeding disease and attracting mosquitoes that
spread malaria and dengue fever. Uncollected domestic waste is the most common
cause of blocked urban drainage systems in Asian cities. In these situations, urban
waste also often mixes with excreta, spreading pathogens and waterborne diseases
around communities.

Low income areas are often so cramped as to be completely inaccessible to refuse

collection vehicles. One method often resorted to is the burning or burying of
rubbish, both of which can be environmentally damaging. Even where waste is
collected, toxic and hazardous wastes generated by industry are often dumped
untreated at the same disposal sites as domestic solid waste. Often considered an
issue most pertinent to the wealthiest countries, the problem of toxic waste is also
rapidly extending beyond the countries of the global North; according to current
trends, the amount of toxic metals being generated in countries such as China,
India, and Turkey could reach levels comparable with those of the UK and France
within the next decade. However, many of these countries do not have adequate
regulations for the disposal of toxic wastes, while the risk posed by the discharge of
hazardous chemicals is being exacerbated by the transfer of certain dirty
industries from the North to the developing world. The brunt of these problems is
borne by low income communities, many of which have been established in close
proximity to damaging waste disposal sites.

Urban Energy Consumption

The way in which urban communities consume energy can have serious impacts not
only on their own immediate environment but on that of the surrounding region. The
most obvious way this occurs is through the generation of air pollution. The rapid
growth of coal fueled industry and of motor vehicles in cities of the developing
world has obvious environmental consequences. In India, between 1990 and 2000,
for example, the number of motor vehicles more than doubled. Indeed, for most of
the cities examined in a study conducted by the Urban Management Programme,
the motorized fleet is growing faster than the population and has significantly
outstripped the capacity of the citys roads. The vehicles used are also often old and
emit much higher level of pollutants than the newer models usually used in
industrialized countries. The same is often true of the equipment used by industry,
particularly in the case of smaller unregulated firms. The severity of atmospheric
pollution is such that 1.5 billion urban dwellers worldwide are exposed to levels of
ambient air pollution above their recommended maximum levels. The main
healththreatening pollutants produced by industry, power stations, vehicles, and
other activities in cities are sulfur dioxide, carbon monoxide, suspended
particulates, hydrocarbons, nitrogen oxides, ozone, volatile organic compounds, and
airborne lead. To take one extreme example, the Chinese city of Guangzhou has a
remarkable seventeen times the amount of sulfur dioxide in London. Dependence
on low quality coal for industry is a particularly acute problem in the cities of China
and Eastern Europe.

Another major problem relating to energy consumption in developing world cities is

that of indoor pollution. Often considered more of a rural problem, this is
increasingly a huge hazard in cities cottage industries and those working in the
informal economy are particularly vulnerable, but even domestic energy use poses
severe dangers. In Accra, for example, the high reliance on burning biomass fuels
such as charcoal and wood for basic household activities can result in serious levels
of indoor pollution. Here women and children are the most vulnerable; indeed,
women and young children face far greater exposure to pollutants from indoor than
outdoor air. It is estimated that half a million annual deaths worldwide can be
attributed to particulate matter and sulfur dioxide alone, and while it is hard to
distinguish the effects of indoor from outdoor pollution, in 1992, the World Bank
identified indoor air pollution as one of the four most critical global environmental
problems.

The effects of urban energy consumption do not end with air pollution; it can also
have a huge impact on surrounding water and land. Where water pollution is severe,
the impact on agriculture and fisheries can be enormous average fish yields in
polluted zones of one river in India are around a sixth of those in unpolluted zones.
Air pollution from urban energy creation can also result in acid rain, which can
devastate agricultural practices. Moreover, in Jakarta, the use of wood as source of
urban energy has been an important cause of periurban deforestation. In this
respect, the environmental impacts of energy consumption in cities both on the
cities themselves and their surrounding regions can be very wide ranging.

Natural Features and Housing

All of the urban environmental problems discussed above are affected by natural
factors such as climate. Extreme temperatures can greatly enhance the effects of a
particular environmental hazard. For example, a hot climate is likely to foster
particular disease vectors, and air pollution problems are likely to rise with
temperature extremes; in cold areas, more coal is burned for heating, and in hot
parts of the world contributions to ozone formation increase due to the release of
hydrocarbons and nitrogen oxides. Other aspects of geography and topography can
also determine the nature of environmental hazards; Mexico City, for example, is
especially plagued by air pollution not just because of the number of cars per
capita, but because it is bounded by mountains that prevent the dispersal of
pollutants.

The location and quality of housing is a further source of urban environmental

problems. Poorly constructed shelter can exacerbate environmental problems such
as indoor air pollution, while problems of overcrowding can contribute to the
spreading of disease. The poor general health of many low income groups and high
levels of malnutrition combine with cramped living conditions to increase
susceptibility to highly contagious diseases such as tuberculosis, influenza, and
meningitis. Moreover, informal settlements are often established on marginal land
due to issues of affordability and the low probability of eviction. However, this also
puts low income communities at risk. Rio de Janeiro provides a trenchant example;
the majority of its favelas are built on the steep hillsides surrounding the city, and
many are destroyed by landslides and have to be rebuilt. Often environmental
safety is traded for security of tenure; indeed, poor groups are usually very aware of
the dangers, and choose these dangerous sites to live in because their low
monetary cost and proximity to work and urban livelihoods meet their most
pressing needs.

Variables Shaping the Brown Agenda

There are a huge number of variables that determine the particular combination of
environmental problems in any given city, but one of the most significant is its
wealth. While richer cities and better off residents are more concerned with
hazardous wastes, ambient air pollution, and lack of green space, the most pressing
environmental concerns in poor cities and among low income groups tend to be
those associated with basic sanitation, water supply, and indoor pollution.
Population size and the rate of urbanization can also influence the nature and
severity of urban environmental problems, with faster growing cities being less able
to deal with service delivery issues such as managing solid waste, sanitation, and
water supply. The size and economic significance of the informal economy is an
important variable, although it can have both beneficial and detrimental impacts.
For example, in India and Pakistan, the volume of waste requiring incineration or
disposal in landfill sites is reduced as a result of waste recovery and recycling
activities in the informal economy. Conversely, difficulties in regulating the activities
of small scale informal sector and cottage industries and their tendency to use
cheap low quality fuel means that the informal economies of many cities pose
hazardous waste problems. Overall, cities with high levels of informal or illegal
industry tend to suffer additional environmental damage.

An additional variable is the collective action of local actors who may be organized
either informally or through statutory channels and who can mitigate environmental
impacts through community organizations. There is a tendency for such
organizations to proliferate among the better off with NIMBY (not in my backyard)
objectives. However, the urban poor can be highly organized and have achieved
impressive results through federations of the urban poor.